It really comes down to what your comfortable with . If you're confident it didn't get hot, then run it . By the way It not so much the heat as the rapid cooling that causes the damage or change in molecular structure ,I should say .
My opinion is a $75 dollar axle shaft is cheap peace of mind . A good friend of mine had a Ford 9" shaft snap right at the hub . While getting on the freeway causing him to flip his Jeep several times . He went to the Hospital and the Jeep went to the wrecking yard .
Sure you did what needed to be done to get the wheel off . I live in CA so I have never seen anything like that, like I said . Negative post like the one earlier dont do anyone any good , except make someone feel superior while remaining anonymous via internet . For what ??
Any how just trying to help move forward . Hoping the suggestions are taken that way . do what you need to do and keep posting , dot shy from asking questions . Good luck

I agree, I think it would be fine to run it, but a 100% fix is only 80$.
And it is my understanding that in order for the steel to reharden, it needs to reach a temp past the tempering temperature and then quenched. But I'm no metallurgy. I don't deal with that kind of stuff. I've only read this online.

I agree, I think it would be fine to run it, but a 100% fix is only 80$.
And it is my understanding that in order for the steel to reharden, it needs to reach a temp past the tempering temperature and then quenched. But I'm no metallurgy. I don't deal with that kind of stuff. I've only read this online.

Sent from my iPhone, probably because I am bored at work.

To quench or temper it would be to heat it up enough for the iron to phase change from ferric to austenitic. Then rapid cooling to lock the crystalline structure.

Highly unlikely he did this in his driveway with the axle in the jeep still

I don't think that the heat did the shaft any favors, but it's not like he put heat directly on the shaft... For the shaft to have been effected, he'd have had to have heated both the wheel and the brake drum so hot that the heat saturated all the way to the shaft. For the shaft to become more brittle, now you'd have to not only gotten the wheel and brake drum hot enough to get to red hot heat, but his driveway "quench" would have had to have rapidly cooled the shaft ...that's inside the axle ...that was heated red hot through thermal transmittance from a brake drum (which is basically a big heat sink) ...which was heated red hot through thermal transmittance from a wheel.

I just don't see that happening.

If it were me, I'd consider changing the shaft due to what's been done to the end of the shaft by the PO, but I wouldn't be worried that the shaft was now more brittle.

__________________
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FYI for everyone.. Tempering is the process or removing hardness from the metal being quenched. This means it makes it bend before breaking aka no brittle fracture.

The axle should be fine to use as is. If anything he made it more ductile

Quenching can either harden or soften a metal, it depends on the chemical make-up of said metal. Ferrous alloys typically become harder when quenched, while non-ferrous become softer. In order to properly quench though, the metal must be heated above a certain point and then rapidly cooled.

Tempering is usually done after quenching, to relieve stresses in the metal to create a less brittle, but still relatively hard, metal. Tempering is heating a part up to a certain point then allowing it to cool normally.

Ok so I'm not real smart , but I do work with metal . I have had personal experience with heating thing up throwing water at it and it cracked of got so hard it couldn't be drilled .
How hot did the Shaft get ? "we" dont Know . Will it be ok ?,, Probably . Do you want to run a shaft that has been Hammered on & exposed to heat ? Not me , but thats just me .
Good luck longview , Thanks for the thread . I have actually learned a lot .

Ok so I'm not real smart , but I do work with metal . I have had personal experience with heating thing up throwing water at it and it cracked of got so hard it couldn't be drilled .
How hot did the Shaft get ? "we" dont Know . Will it be ok ?,, Probably . Do you want to run a shaft that has been Hammered on & exposed to heat ? Not me , but thats just me .
Good luck longview , Thanks for the thread . I have actually learned a lot .

Ill probably end up throwing a new shaft In, I'm not going to be driving it till December.

Me too I think I've learned more about metal in this thread than my axle shaft! LOL

I cant argue much with being safer than sorry but I am not much on throwing money away. It is unlikely that the heat you threw on the wheel got the axle any where hot enough to worry about. On a long downhill riding the brakes you get the shaft way hotter than you would doing what you did. Beating on it didnt do it much good, but also, probably didnt hurt anything. That being said, if I was going to do something for safety sake, i would put a new set of studs in and spin the new wheel on the axle to make sure it is running true.